The Language of Inclusion and Exclusion in Immigration and Integration

This collection provides an overview of some of the most relevant concepts in the study of the language of inclusion and exclusion, specifically with a view to the functioning of nation-state categories. Categorizations, words, and phrases are constantly renewed with the intention to exclude (mostly) or to include (rarely), promulgating problematizations that highlight discursive distinctions between in-groups and out-groups. Such discursive constructions and the practices through which they are effectuated are sites of symbolic power, and their study reveals the workings of power. Historical analysis of the language of inclusion and exclusion can help elucidate contemporary transformations of discursive power.

The chapters in this volume discuss forms of discursive problematization such as defining, claiming, legitimizing, expanding, sensationalization and suggestion, and it connects these to the discursive drawing of boundaries, focusing on discursive constructions of ‘illegality’, race, class, gender, immigrant integration and transnationalism. As state categorizations continuously differ, both the historical analysis of their genesis, functioning and transformation, and the contemporary analysis of their practical effectuation are crucial to an understanding of inclusion and exclusion.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Marlou Schrover is a Professor of migration history and social differences at Leiden University, The Netherlands. She has recently completed a large project on gender and migration.

Willem Schinkel is Professor of Social Theory at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands and is a member of The Young Academy of the Royal Dutch Society for Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He heads an ERC-funded research team investigating practices of monitoring and social imagination in the fields of immigration, immigrant integration, the monitoring of capital flows and the monitoring of climate change.